How to build your paintball team – Friday Frag

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Frag. Last week I left everyone with the question regarding how many Captains there should be on a team. The answer to this should always be 1. The reasoning behind this is simple, when you have too many people making decisions, problems will arise. If the work load gets to be too much for one person, the Team Captain should look into bringing on a Co-Captain. The Co-Captain will take his direction from the Team Captain, and will eliminate any confusion you may come across from two different, but equal points of view.

Recruiting paintball team members is critical for new teams

Now the topic of recruitment is something that is different with every team in how they go about doing it. What may work for one team may not work for another and vice versa. What I am going to write about should not be taken as the end all-be all guide to it. I will give you some suggestions from the different methods I have utilized or have seen other teams utilize when it came to bolstering their roster of players. There are some basic factors that should never vary when it comes to recruiting however.

These basic factors can be summed up with who/what/where/when and why are you recruiting? Regardless if you are a milsim or hybrid team, you should have all of these questions answered before you start looking to recruit players to your roster. Let’s brake down the 5 W’s of recruiting:

Who – Who are you recruiting? Are they like minded players that will fit the team’s format?

What – What type of players are you recruiting? Are they experienced or still doe-eyed at game on?

Where – Where are you recruiting from? Are you posting flyers at local fields or are you posting adds online?

When – When are you starting to recruit?

Why – Why are you recruiting?

Seems simple doesn’t it? However, you would be surprised at how many teams will recruit any person that shows interest and not put any thought into who they are recruiting. Those teams do not last long, as their loose recruitment policy increases the likelihood of the team bringing on a scumbag or cheater. (I consider both to be one in the same.) The teams that have survived the 2-3 year mark are the ones that have a strict recruitment policy in place that insures the longevity of their team.

To combat this, some teams post strict guidelines of what they are looking for. This can be simple as owning your own gear and having a job, to requiring you to purchase the brand of marker that the team has a sponsorship. Another method I have seen is for teams to hold try outs at their local home field. The purpose of these try outs, is for the team to evaluate the player on and off the field and see how they mesh with the team. For some teams it may be a day of rec play, but for others, they make ask you to come to 4-5 games before they make their decision.

One method I have seen teams employ is the quantity to get quality method. What these teams will do, is ask 10 people to come out and play a few games, and slowly but surely, they will start to weed themselves out, so out of the initial 10 players, you may get only 2 or 3 quality players. While similar to that of the try out method, it allows the player to interact more with the team off the field and away from the field.

In closing, I can not stress enough that the new recruits need to feel welcomed to the team. No one wants to join a group to become instantly an outsider. Take it slow when you look for players, there is no reward for showing up to an event with 100 players, especially if they all suck!

This weeks question is: Which of the 5 W’s do you feel is the most important?

Next week we will be discussing the issue of attending the team’s first event.

The team I just joined had a year waiting period to see if you bonded right with the team. We always do stuff outside of paintball so we know we fit together on or off the field. We’re really more like a collection of friends that met eachother through paintball.